Syfy creatures take bite into Saturdays

LOS ANGELES - Take two former pop princesses, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, and cast them in a TV movie involving illegally imported snakes and alligators on steroids.

LOS ANGELES — Take two former pop princesses, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, and cast them in a TV movie involving illegally imported snakes and alligators on steroids.

Add gobs of gooey cheese, a Dynasty-style catfight and a trio of fishermen eaten alive.

Most important, make liberal use of computer-

generated creatures and effects:

Pythons blown up with dynamite! Thousands of hatching reptile eggs! Alligators the size of skyscrapers!

Then distribute a news release promising “down and dirty” action and emphasizing Gibson and Tiffany, who had dueling singing careers — and hairstyles — more than two decades ago.

“We settle our old ’80s music rivalry,” Gibson said, “by putting on short skirts and throwing snakes and gators at each other.”

A rare and colossal alignment of camp and corn?

Not really: For the Syfy cable network, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid — premiering tonight — is just another Saturday night.

Gaining attention on television increasingly requires something over-the-top. For example, Jersey Shore on MTV needed drunken-girl brawls and wall-to-wall profanity to stand out among reality shows.

Syfy has its messy B movies — guilty-pleasure titles that delve into the absurd, such as huge sharks.

Routinely high ratings have helped make the movies an indispensable part of the Syfy schedule. An average of 2 million people watch, according to Nielsen Co., with some of the movies ( Pterodactyl, Dragon Storm) attracting more than 3 million — on a par with Syfy’s biggest hit series, Warehouse 13 and Eureka.

The Saturday-night mayhem also fits snugly with the network’s effort to broaden beyond science fiction.

Sharktopus, the blood-soaked tale of a hybrid shark-octopus developed as a secret military weapon, was one of Syfy’s biggest hits last year. (The monster goes haywire and terrorizes bikini-clad women along Mexican Riviera beaches; 2.5?million people tuned in.)

Roger Corman, known as the King of the B’s for pumping out movies such as The Wasp Woman and Humanoids From the Deep, said he reluctantly agreed to produce the film — which got its start when a Syfy marketing executive, brainstorming ideas for new creatures, came up with the aquatic crossbreed.

“It’s not easy to take a computer-generated shark that can walk on a beach with octopus legs and make it seem believable,” Corman said. “My theory is that you can go up to a certain level of insanity and still keep the audience intrigued. Go beyond the insanity barrier, and people turn against you.

“In my opinion, Sharktopus breaks that barrier.”

The results, he said, showed that, “even at my age, you can learn something.”

Syfy’s Saturday-night movies hark back to the “creature feature” days of local television. Starting on a widespread basis in the 1960s and continuing through the 1980s, stations programmed off-peak hours with old horror movies such as Creature From the Black Lagoon.

In Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, Gibson, who rose to fame with ditties such as Shake Your Love, plays a fanatical animal-rights advocate who spends her nights stealing exotic snakes from pet stores and setting them loose in the Everglades.

Tiffany ( I Think We’re Alone Now) plays a park ranger who looks out for alligators, which are being massacred by snakes that have grown to gigantic proportions.

By the end of the movie, almost all of Florida is in ruins.

Adding to the camp factor: Micky Dolenz, the drummer for the Monkees, plays himself; and Kathryn Joosten, the Emmy-winning actress known recently for playing Karen McCluskey on Desperate Housewives, pops up to chew some scenery.

The creatures in Mega Python vs. Gatoroid — much like those in other such films — look ridiculous. Computerized effects have come a long way, but when an alligator the size of the Goodyear blimp chases cars through the streets of Miami, the viewer’s reaction is more likely to involve laughter than terror.

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